WHICH GREEN PATH: WILL CALIFORNIA SEEK GROWTH OR HEED ZEALOTS?

Will California choose economic growth or heed zealots over experts?

About the series

Part 1, March 3:

A new energy era has emerged, thanks to technological advances. One of these advances involves a type of drilling known as hydraulic fracturing. It’s already having a huge impact on the U.S. – and it could yield a gigantic economic boom in California.

Part 2: March 10

Fracking has been around since the 1940s, but has drawn heavy fire from environmentalists only in recent years. What are the environmental issues involved? What do independent experts say? And who does the Obama administration side with?

Part 3: Today

Gov. Jerry Brown needs to champion fracking in California in the same way that former Gov. Ed Rendell, a fellow Democrat, did in Pennsylvania. Tens of thousands of jobs likely would be created – as well as tens of billions of dollars in new state revenue.

California’s environmental movement is so powerful – and so synonymous with the dominant Democratic Party – that the odds appear stacked against the Golden State ever being able to develop its immense oil reserves in the Monterey Shale formation, which is located under large areas of Central and Southern California.

That’s because this would require broad use of hydraulic fracturing, the dramatically improved drilling technique that has yielded energy booms in several states. Greens see it as an unspeakable evil to the point were alternative views cannot even be acknowledged. The central, overriding point of our March 10 editorial – the documented evidence that the Obama administration, the greenest in history, believes that “fracking” is just another manageable heavy industry – was not mentioned a single time in the many comments and emails we received from critical U-T readers.

But there is one person with the credibility to bring fracking to the Central Valley, where energy exploration holds the most promise: Gov. Jerry Brown. We’ve got an idea or two about how he could pull it off. And if he does, Brown would be credited with triggering a 21st-century economic boom in California with vast, far-reaching benefits.

This promise was laid out in a study released last week from independent researchers at the University of Southern California. It found that development of the Monterey Shale had the potential to boost the state’s economic output by as much as 14.3 percent, yielding up to $24.6 billion in state and local tax revenue, and creating as many as 2.8 million jobs by 2020.

That latter figure is crucial. It suggests a tiny state unemployment rate of 3 or 3.5 percent.

It is also not a pipe dream. Federal studies say that California is sitting on recoverable oil reserves of at least 15.4 billion barrels – comparable to Saudi Arabia, where oil wealth is so immense that free or cheap cradle-to-grave health and social services are the norm. Many private energy experts think the federal estimate is extremely conservative.

If Brown chooses to believe the Obama administration instead of blinkered greens and goes for this energy bonanza, he won’t have to look farther than Pennsylvania to find a big-state model of how to proceed.

Ed Rendell took over as governor of the Keystone State in 2003. Like Brown, he is a veteran Democrat with a history of solid environmental credentials. A key emphasis of the former Philadelphia mayor’s winning 2002 campaign was his commitment to spend more on cleaning up abandoned mines, restoring waterways and wetlands, and preserving open space.

When energy companies told the Rendell administration that newly improved drilling technologies offered great promise for reaching natural gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale that exists under much of Pennsylvania, it did its due diligence and concluded that expanded hydraulic fracturing would pose environmental problems – but no more so than other heavy industries. (That’s the same position as the Obama administration’s.)

Since then, thousands of successful wells have turned Pennsylvania into a natural gas giant, creating 250,000 jobs (directly and indirectly) and pumping billions into the state economy. Royalty payments alone to Pennsylvania landowners for the natural gas extracted from under their property reached $1.2 billion in 2012.

Responding to concerns about the impact the heavy industry was having, Rendell tightened rules on water use and imposed fracking-well fees, which the state used to add 100 more environmental inspectors.

The result, according to Susan Brantley, director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Pennsylvania State University, could be a model for other governments considering wide-scale fracking. Writing for The New York Times, Brantley said there is simply no evidence of fracking polluting water supplies, and she noted the great environmental benefits of substituting cleaner natural gas for coal in producing electricity. Because of the huge boom in domestic natural gas, the U.S. released the fewest greenhouse gases in 2012 than it had in 20 years.

But instead of this fact triggering applause from environmentalists and cheers for the fracking booms in Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Texas and Ohio, hydraulic fracturing has produced hysteria. Green groups – which desperately want the era of fossil fuels to end, not be extended – have created a cottage industry of sky-is-falling warnings about a drilling practice they tolerated for decades.

In New York, where the Marcellus Shale extends under much of the state, this has led to a moratorium on fracking.

Rendell, who left office in 2011, offered this advice last year to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo: “New York would be crazy not to lift the moratorium.” Rendell offered “to testify before any legislative committee” on fracking’s behalf.

Here’s hoping he gives Jerry Brown a call as well.

We hope our governor also hears from another prominent liberal Democrat – one who happens to be both a governor and a trained petroleum geologist. It’s Colorado Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, who has repeatedly denounced attempts to link fracking with groundwater pollution as “all hyperbole and anxiety ... and no science. Hydraulic fracturing doesn’t connect to the groundwater.”

Celebrities Matt Damon, Yoko Ono and other anti-fossil fuel zealots simply don’t have more credibility on fracking than Rendell, Hickenlooper and the Obama administration. Thankfully, so far, the Brown administration appears to be heeding the latter group, not the former. New state regulations affecting hydraulic fracturing that were released in December were welcome in their straightforwardness. When asked last week about fracking in California, the governor struck a reasonable tone: “Between now and development lies a lot of questions that need to be answered, and I feel confident that the people are in place in my administration to handle the issues as they come up.”

But given greens’ clout, it’s impossible to imagine widespread fracking in California without an intense political fight.

Which brings us to our ideas about how Brown might overcome the green juggernaut. First, he needs to counter the anti-fracking disinformation campaign by noting the position of the Obama administration over and over and bringing in credible surrogates like Rendell and Hickenlooper to back him up.

And after that message sinks in, the governor should offer specifics about how billions in new state revenue from our 21st-century oil boom could be used.

We suspect that rolling back community college, CSU and UC tuition to 1990 levels might excite a lot of young voters and their parents.

We suspect that guaranteeing a big infusion of new money for the K-12 school system would excite educators, social justice activists and millions of people in disadvantaged communities.

We suspect that using the oil revenue gusher to shore up a pension system for teachers that is horribly underfunded would excite teachers and their unions – and the worried families of aging teachers.

We suspect that fixing up our aging roads, freeways, ports and airports would please the business community and anyone who leaves the house.

And we are 100 percent certain that lower state sales and income taxes would be hugely popular.

Should Brown choose to accept this mission, the challenge would be immense. But so would the payoff. Being a democratic, First World version of Saudi Arabia is a worthy goal. For the future of California, we hope the governor agrees.